


Fallen

by wolfraven80



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirate, F/F, Romance, Spooky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27329689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfraven80/pseuds/wolfraven80
Summary: Pirate AU -- A hundred years after Fódlan's fall into twilight, Captain Edelgard von Hresvelg and First Mate Byleth Eisner sail treacherous waters in search of a way to defeat the Immaculate One and end Fódlan's curse.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2020





	Fallen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PrisonersDilemma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrisonersDilemma/gifts).



> I'm rubbish at writing M-rated fic but I saw you had pirate AU on your list and I thought that would be fun to try. I was going for something like Fire Emblem meets Sunless Sea. I hope you enjoy it.

First Mate Byleth Eisner leaned against the ship's bulwark and gazed out over the black waves. Clouds the colour of bruised flesh loomed on the horizon above a smear of dusky orange. It was impossible to tell day from night in the eternal twilight. There was only the tide, rising and falling beneath a sky that never changed.

Byleth's eyes darted to a flash of white among the waves where a line of bone-white fins broke the water's murky surface. She spun towards the helmsman and roared, "Sawback off starboard!"

Without hesitation, Petra Macneary spun the ship's wheel, veering the Flame Emperor away from the hulking beast lurking below. Its sinuous body was as long as a schooner and the blades on its back could saw a ship in half.

Within moments, Captain Edelgard von Hreslvelg appeared from below deck, calling for an update from the helm on their change of course. Her crimson leggings and jacket were pristine, flowing off the curves of her body like blood from a gaping wound. The cutlass at her hip gleamed and the wind fondled the feathers of her tricorne and the long sheet of her pale hair. Her one good eye fixed the helmsman as she made her report. The black eyepatch over her left eye did little to make her stare less piercing and Byleth waited for that unflinching gaze to turn her way.

When it did, a tiny smile curled the Captain's full lips. She moved to join Byleth by the bulwark and gave the waters a once-over before turning back to her First Mate. "Well done, Master Eisner. You do earn your keep around here, don't you?" She clapped Byleth on the shoulder but her hand lingered there, longer than was necessary for camaraderie. It lingered like it wished stay there and trace the lines of Byleth's scars, the marks of battle with men and beasts on and under the sea.

"I try, Captain," she said, though her chest felt tight, bound as if by slithery oil-eel that had wrapped itself around her torso and pushed all the air from her lungs. Edelgard stood so close, her scabbard pressing into Byleth's hip.

On the deck behind them, one of the crew—it might have been Dorothea—began to sing. The rest of the deck crew soon joined in, their voices rising and falling with the tide.

_A hundred years since Fódlan fell_

_A hundred years we're in this hell_

_The young grow old but never die_

_All trapped beneath this twilit sky_

_And never shall we see the sun_

_Until the white beast's blood shall run_

The song had many verses. Byleth had spent her life on the sea; she had heard them all.

"We'll reach the Ailell Narrows soon," Edelgard said without looking away from the frothing sea. "Are you sure you want to go through with this?"

Byleth gave a curt nod. Already the scent of Alliell's smoke was beginning to mix with the briny air. "It's the only way to find the entrance to the Holy Tomb."

Edelgard let out a slow breath. "Very well." And then she turned and called out to the nearest crewman. "Get the chains ready. It's almost time."

The links of the chain were as big as her thumb and forefinger held together to form a circle, and thicker than her thumb, enough to send an unlucky sailor to the bottom of the sea if he were to get tangled up in it. Byleth took her position against the ship's main mast and stared straight ahead as Edelgard wound the chains around her. First around her ankles, fastening a lock at each, and then looping the iron links around her knees, her thighs, her waist. The clinking metal filled Byleth's ears, drowning out the creaking of the ship's timbers and the slapping sea waves. All she could hear was the chatter of those metal links as they snaked around her body and made a prisoner of her, and the rasp of her own quick breaths.

Edelgard leaned close, the heat of her breath tickling Byleth's ear. "Be calm. I know you can do this."

She craned her neck to meet Edelgard's gaze, the familiar violet of her one good eye and the other, blighted by the Brand of Flames, hidden beneath her eyepatch. "Aye, Captain." Byleth took a long, steadying breath. "Keep going."

Edelgard wound the chains around her ribs and shoulders, and then secured her arms with another lock. If it were anyone else these measures would be absurd, but Edelgard alone understood the strength bestowed by the Brand they each carried. Every Brand conferred some advantage—the Brand of Indech made Bernadetta's aim with a pistol infallible though it had robbed her of the power of speech. Ferdinand's Brand of Cichol made him fleet-footed, though it had withered his left hand. But the Brand of Flames endowed its bearer with truly inhuman strength.

With the chains in place, Edelgard removed from her pocket a pair of gooey yellow clumps. Ember wax was not easy to come by. They'd taken their skiffs into the mangrove wilds of Grondor, using paddles, pistols, and cutlasses to fight off the amber crocodilians, until they'd reached the deepest part of the wilds where the air vibrated with the buzzing of candle-bees. They had raided a hive for its wax and lost three men, two turned to ash and a third drowned, before they'd managed to return to the Flame Emperor.

"Everyone! Prepare yourselves!" Edelgard shouted and stuffed the clumps of ember wax into her ears. The others followed suit. Ember wax, made from the hives of candle-bees, was the only thing that could block the sirens' song.

Within a few minutes the first bloom of flame lit up the horizon. The sea roiled and seethed around the Flame Emperor's hull. Columns of blackened stone rose out of the water like angry sentries. Past these, the burbling slopes were always alight, liquid fire oozing from their peaks. To circle around Alliell's fiery hills was a journey of two weeks but most chose that route rather than risk the narrows and the sirens' song, but Petra guided the ship between the columns, easing through the black channel with a steady hand.

The sirens clustered on the jutting outcrops of black stone amid the oozing fire. Their spindly limbs and long torsos gave them the appearance of a huge mantises save that their heads were beaked, and their flesh an ashy grey. Some flitted through the air, leathery wings carrying them through gouts of flame and billowing smoke, and then returned to their purchases and began their song. The wings on their backs remained open and rubbed against each other producing a hum that rose and fell like ocean waves.

The humming drifted through the air, drowning out the seething fire of the Ailell's peaks. It filled the air, filled Byleth's ears, rising and falling. It was the song of the endless sea, stretching forever, a lullaby.

A lullaby like one her mother might have sung if she had had a mother. It rose and fell. A mother singing her to sleep, rocking her as the waves rocked the ship.

Rising and falling, like a mother humming her to sleep. A lullaby urging her to sleep and rest and dream. Byleth's eyes grew heavy. Her head dropped, chin resting against her chest, and she was lost to dreams.

Byleth dreamed of her father, pulled beneath the waves, his mouth filling with brine. She watched him sink into the blue-black deep, his eyes wide, blank, empty, staring up to search for a sun he would never see again.

She dreamed of the Immaculate One in all her gleaming glory, her sinuous neck rising from the ocean, her scales as white as bleached bone. She saw a thousand spears breaking on her adamantine scales, a hundred ships dashed against her monstrous limbs.

She dreamed of a cavern hidden by the waves, filled with seawater except at the lowest of low tides, when the sea retreated far away. Bereft of its watery guardian, a winding path was laid bad, and at its end, a glowing room in Fódlan's heart.

She dreamed of Lady Rhea, no longer hulking and immaculate, but human-like, a lithe, imposing creature with eyes as piercing as sharpened steel. She dreamed of chains binding her, holding her against a stone slab and Rhea standing over her, a dagger in hand. And all Byleth's strength was nothing against the chains that bound her there, thrashing and helpless as a fish pulled up from the sea on a fisherman's hook.

She dreamed of Edelgard in her arms. Edelgard in her bed, the heat of her bare skin pressed against her own, her hips rocking beneath her. Her hands, her mouth, roamed Edelgard's body, caressed every dip and curve. The heat of Edelgard's lips against her own, her arms tugging her closer, always closer. Edelgard calling her name, calling her—

"Byleth! Byleth, wake up!"

Byleth's eyelids were leaden as she struggled to open her eyes. Her head ached as she tried to raise it, only to find her face buried in a sheet of flowing white hair. Edelgard. Her whole body was pressed against Byleth, her shoulder pushing into Byleth's chest, her arms circling Byleth, hands clamped around her wrists tighter than iron manacles. "Captain?" Byleth murmured. Immediately the pressure eased and Edelgard released her arms and drew back enough to look up into her face.

"You're awake." They were so close that Byleth could feel the tension draining out of Edelgard's body. Byleth's arms moved as if to reach for her, but she was met instead with the clanking of chains. "I'm sorry," Edelgard said quickly, stepping away, her cheeks flushed a fever-bright red. "You were thrashing so hard a minute ago we were afraid you’d snap the mast in two."

"A bad dream," Byleth said, licking her lips. Her mouth was dry and filled with the taste of ash. She supposed she should be grateful. Most sailors who heard the song of the sirens went mad from dreaming and threw themselves into the sea. "Are we through the Narrows?"

"Yes, we're through now," Edelgard said as she stepped behind her to begin undoing the locks and chains. "Did you learn what we needed?"

"I did. I saw a passage into the Holy Tomb."

#

They had stopped to resupply in Oghma Port. The denizens of Oghma had turned sagging battlements of crumbling sandstone into crooked habitations that seemed to slant inexorably towards the sea. Old men clustered on the docks, their skin like threadbare fabric stretched taut over jutting bones. They waited for sailors and offered, for a few coins, to tell tales of the sun, and the blue sky, and wide fields of golden grain, and a thousand wonders the young had never seen.

From there they turned towards Garreg Mach winding among the Reefs of Ruin, where whole cities had been taken by the sea and a ship could easily run aground on a broken stone column or the toppled remains of a cathedral. They waited until the ebbing of the tide before making a final approach towards the Garreg Mach, the Seiros Navy's stronghold.

Telescope held against her good eye, Edelgard peered through the lens towards the ship bobbing on the dark waters in the distance. Seiros ships were impossible to mistake even in the twilight thanks to the white masts that jutted from their decks like shafts of bone. But reading its other markings was another matter. Edelgard stared, unblinking, until a breeze finally rose and snatched at the ship's banners so that they twitched and squirmed in its grasp and revealed the emblem they bore. The brand of Charon.

Edelgard put away the telescope and turned to her crew. "It's the Thunderbrand," she announced. Cries of outrage rose and fell from the crew. Captain Catherine Rubens Charon was a stalwart defender of the Immaculate one. It was she who had captured and executed Captain Lonato and his son Christophe after they defected from the Seiros Navy.

Byleth joined her by the bulwarks. "I don't like leaving the ship when Thunderbrand is out there."

Edelgard nodded. "I know, but I have full confidence in Hubert. He'll be able to divert Catherine's attention."

"Maybe I should go alone."

Edelgard spun to face her. "Absolutely not. We don't know what will be waiting in the Holy Tomb and we're the only two who can use the Sword of the Creator."

For a moment Byleth looked like she might protest, her lips thinned to a line, but finally she let out a long breath and nodded.

Before the tide ebbed too far they turned the ship, as if preparing to leave, but really it was to block the sight of the little skiff being lowered off the port-side. The crew were manning the cannons should the Thunderbrand try to pursue them.

With both bearers of the Brand of Flames rowing, the skiff sped through the water like a shot from a pistol. Edelgard matched her rhythm to Byleth's long strokes, but it was impossible not to notice the way her shoulders worked beneath her jacket and the flexing muscles of her forearms where her sleeves had been rolled up. Byleth was always impossible for Edelgard to ignore, whether waking or sleeping. In dreams, the sway of the ship became the rocking of Byleth's body against hers, and the salty air turned into the taste of sweat on soft skin. Yet even in dreams the location of Byleth's brand remained mysterious. Edelgard had never seen Byleth's marking and could never discern how it affected her.

Once they reached the shore they dragged the skiff behind a rocky outcrop to hide it from view and then made their way to the along the shore. The tide-smoothed stones were slick with oily water-weeds that seemed to squirm and ooze beneath their boots. The fortress of Garreg Mach loomed like an angry sentinel above them, its base submerged beneath the sea except at the ebbing of the tide. Now they could see the massive blocks the high towers had been built upon and the broken shards of other structures that littered the ground at its feet. Toppled arches and skewed paving stones, now draped in seaweed and inhabited by scuttling crabs and gelatinous slugs, led them towards the cave Byleth had seen in her dreams—or rather an ancient tunnel swallowed by the black tides.

The tunnel opened like the maw of a great sea beast, ready to swallow them whole, but a little ways ahead the darkness dissipated in a hazy glow. It was not the mellow flicker of firelight but something paler and pulsing.

Byleth paused before the entrance and cast a glance at Edelgard. The captain nodded and, in perfect synch, they drew their cutlasses and stepped into the tunnel.

As they forged ahead, Edelgard realized the strange light emanated from the smooth, shimmering surface of the walls themselves. They were coated in something scale-like and iridescent that oozed the strange illumination. The pearly light cast everything in a pallid glow, giving Byleth's face a corpse-like sheen.

After some minutes, the tunnel ended and they stepped into a high-domed room. Here too the walls pulsed with an opalescent glow. At the far end of the chamber a set of stairs led to a dias. Edelgard's breath caught as her eyes came to rest on the sword. Resting on a stand in the centre of the dais, the sword was a long, jagged thing, like the spine of a monstrous eel, and the same yellowish tint the scrimshaw tokens many sailors carried for luck. But even from a distance Edelgard could feels its tug, a sort of itch in the eye that had been blighted by the Brand of Flames.

"That's it," Byleth whispered.

"Yes," Edelgard agreed.

Cutlasses still raised, they strode into the chamber. Stone slabs, rising waist-high, studded the room, each carved with familiar symbols: the Brand of Gautier, the Brand of Lamine, the Brand of Charon. And so on. They had reached the centre of the chamber when the dead men rose.

They slithered out of the shadows at the far end of the dias. Their skin was the bloated blue-black of the drowned. It was clear from the ragged clothes that clung to their mangled frames that they had been sailors—merchants with their faded orange cloaks, pirates in their long greatcoats and tricorn hats, officers of the Seiros navy still in their black and silver-trimmed uniforms—but all travellers of the sea. All men who had fallen into the deeps and lain there while the waves made free with their flesh. And yet they moved, they strode on long limbs in rotting leather boots or limped on rickety peg-legs.

Edelgard froze in her tracks, staring up at the ghastly ensemble. "By all the oceans, what _are_ you?"

A man with a hook for a hand opened his mouth and let out a gurgling laugh. "We are the living drowned."

Another with golden lieutenant's bars on his jacket took a step down the stairs. "We breathe the sea."

A gap-toothed man wearing a faded red kerchief moved to the second step. "We are the guardians of the sword."

And then, like a surging tide, they descended from the dias, rushing towards Byleth and Edelgard, parting to encircle them. Without a word, Byleth moved so they were back to back. The stone slabs on either side funneled the drowned men towards them in pairs. Edelgard drew the pistol from her belt and fired off a shot at the nearest figure. The bullet struck him in the chest and sent him stumbling backwards. When he righted himself she stared aghast at the a fist-size hole chest, oozing with blackened flesh.

"Bullets barely slow them down," she said.

"Then steel will have to do," Byleth replied at her back.

And then there was no more time. A tall fellow in a tattered greatcoat and a beard of seaweed and coral, lashed at her with a hefty sabre. His strength would have been formidable against any normal foe, but Edelgard's brand made her something else entirely. She easily met him blow for blow and shoved him back against the figure behind him—just in time to block a wild strike from a naval officer with a rusting cutlass. His blade shattered against the honed steel of her sword.

Behind her, the clashing of metal told her that Byleth was holding her own—just as Edelgard had expected.

The man with the hooked hand was next. The slash and thrust of his blade were quick and precise and Edelgard's own blade darted through the air to meet his with equal zest. She ducked beneath the wild arc of his hook that seemed to come out of nowhere thanks to the blind spot caused by her blighted eye. She drew a knife from her belt. This time, when his sword came down against her blade, she anticipated the slashing hook and uses the knife to block. She gave a mighty heave, shoving him back and then, quick, before he could counter, her blade slashed upwards towards his raised wrist.

The hook clattered on the stone floor. The drowned pirate let our a gurgling howl, though no blood oozed from the wound.

"We'll take you apart piece by piece if we have to," Edelgard said, her voice like the edge of her blade. "You can spend the rest of your immortal lives as nattering heads on these paving stones." The drowned men shifted uneasily. Byleth took a step back, pressing herself close to Edelgard once more.

"Let 'em be," announced a willowy figure with a pegleg and an eyepatch over his left eye. "No need to lose yer limbs over this lot." Swollen lips parted in a too-wide grin, revealing rows of broken teeth. "After all, not a one with a beatin' heart can climb those steps."

Shaggy heads bobbed in agreement and the knot of drowned men loosened and fell back. As they moved back towards the dias, Byleth came to stand next to Edelgard once more, though her gaze continued to track their enemies. "I'm going up there," Edelgard said under her breath. "You can't trust dead men's tales."

Byleth's hand snagged her wrist, her grip vice-like. "No, wait."

"We need that sword— _before_ the tide comes in and drowns us too."

"I'll go," Byleth said. "You stay at the foot of the dias and wait and watch my back."

Edelgard shook her head. "We can both go."

"Captain, please." Byleth tugged on her wrist and Edelgard turned to look into her eyes, the same blank blue of the roiling waves. She was certain she could drown in them as easily as in the sea's briny deeps. "Trust me."

And she did.

She gave a curt nod. Byleth's hand fell away from her wrist and then her first mate was striding towards the dias. Following at a distance, sword raised, Edelgard scanned the room to be certain none of the drowned men remained in the lower part of the chamber. But they had retreated to the dais and watched, grinning like ever-cheerful skulls as they stood around the jagged sword they guarded. Edelgard's heart pounded against her ribs as Byleth ascended the stairs without a moment's hesitation. On the last step she launched herself forward and surged towards the sword. Cries of outrage rang through the chamber, echoing beneath the dome as if a thousand voices were raised in sudden protest.

Byleth's hand wrapped around the hilt of the Sword of the Creator.

Instantly the sword sprang to life, glowing red like a hot poker, ready to sear its will into any foolish enough to approach. The drowned men wailed and howled, converging on Byleth. She raised the Sword of the Creator and drove the glowing saw-toothed blade into the stone floor. A rippling wave of power tore out of the sword, throwing the drowned men against the chamber like ships dashed against the rocks by stormy breakers.

Sword of the Creator in hand, Byleth turned and fled down the stairs. She snatched Edelgard's hand. "Come on!" she yelled without breaking pace and Edelgard stumbled along behind her. The howls of the drowned men followed them down the opalescent corridor where water was already pooling around their boots. They splashed and stumbled and raced but never stopped to look behind them.

#

Edelgard had never been so grateful to see the twilit sky as when they emerged from the tunnel and left behind its opalescent glow and the drowned men who'd now failed in their task. They retrieved the skiff and rowed it around the shore to the rendezvous point where they would wait for the Fire Lord, due to arrive in a few hours when the tide was highest.

The Sword of the Creator rested in the skiff. It had returned to its original ivory hue once Byleth had set it down. Even though Byleth's back was to her as she doubled checked the knots securing their boat, when she glanced over her shoulder she caught Edelgard eyeing the blade. "Now that we have the sword, we can face the Immaculate One on equal terms."

"Yes," Edelgard said quietly, but her gaze had shifted from the sword to Byleth. "What the drowned men said in the chamber—they were lying, weren't they?"

For a moment Byleth was very still. And then she rose and turned to walk slowly to Edelgard. "No, they weren't."

Edelgard's brow furrowed. "What are you saying?"

"There's something I—" Byleth stopped, eyes fixed on the ground. When she looked back up her expression had hardened as if she'd reached some resolution. "Let me show you."

She grasped Edelgard's hand and slid it under the hem of her shirt and pressed Edelgard's palm against her skin. A violent flush crept up Edelgard's cheeks as Byleth guided her hand beneath the layers of her clothes until it rested between her breasts, over her heart. But instead of smooth skin, her fingers were greeted by a rough, raised pattern of flowing lines. Her mouth went dry as her fingers, as if by a will of their own, began to trace those lines, those terrible, familiar lines.

"The brand," Edelgard said. "But it's your…"

"My heart," Byleth whispered, pressing Edelgard's hand firmly against her chest.

Edelgard held her breath, held perfectly still, but even in that stillness she could not feel anything pulsing beneath her palm. Byleth's heart did not beat.

When she looked up into Byleth's eyes again, she knew the truth. The horror of it made her at once want to draw away from her, to pretend the awfulness wasn't real… and to draw her closer, to erase all the space between them and offer her own throbbing heartbeat as enough for them both.

Byleth heaved a sigh. "The brand blighted my heart. I'm alive but without a heartbeat."

"And if we defeat the Immaculate One and restore Fódlan what will become of you?"

"I don't know," Byleth said, shaking her head.

"Byleth…" She wanted to say more, but the words choked her like a mouthful of brine.

But then Byleth's hand tightened around Edelgard's. "Whatever happens, I've charted this course with you and nothing can turn me from it. Nothing can turn me from you."

Her hand was still pressed to Byleth's chest, skin hot against her palm. "Our fates are intertwined," Edelgard said, interlacing their fingers.

And though in the future they would be together, tangled in battle, facing the Immaculate One side by side, or back on the ship, bodies entwined under sweat-damped sheets, it was in that moment that Edelgard was most certain. She wanted to say more, but her words seemed to ebb away like a retreating tide. So she kissed Byleth and let her lips and her tongue speak in her stead.

Byleth's mouth was as warm as the waves were cold, her embrace as strong as the light was weak, and Edelgard knew that, heartbeat or no, together they would one day bring that light back to Fódlan.

**The End**


End file.
